ARC Review: Talon the Black by Melissa Mitchell

Title: Talon the Black
Author: Melissa Mitchell
Series: The Dragonwall Saga #1
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: BooksGoSocial works
Publication Date: February 28th, 2019
Edition: Kindle Edition, 715 pages
Source: NetGalley
Purchase: Amazon US 

Synopsis:

   What would you do if a dragon fell from the sky? Claire Evans is a small-towner from Indiana faced with this exact situation. When a dragon crash-lands in her corn field, she goes gallivanting off to find it.

   This incident triggers a chain of events that sweep our heroine into a complicated plot to destroy a kingdom. At the heart of it is a powerful sorcerer whose only desire is to bring about a past long forgotten, a past that favors those of magical blood and condemns those who are not worthy, a past that would result in the annihilation of peace and the deaths of many.

   Claire finds herself thrust into an old fashioned world liken to those she's grown up reading about, one of fantasy and intrigue. There, she soon realizes that a lifetime of books hardly prepared her. She must face difficulties never before confronted, and in so doing, discover secrets about herself. All the while, there is one obstacle that ultimately stands in her way: The King of Dragonwall. And she needs him on her side if she is to succeed. Will such a thing be possible?

   The King of Dragonwall is not like those before him. Troubled and temperamental, he is scarred by more than the events that shaped him. Worst of all, he is mateless. With no queen and no heir, his subjects are demanding he abandon tradition and marry into nobility. But with the rising threats upon his borders, goblin unrest to the east, and talk of an even darker terror to the north, he will soon have far greater problems than that of finding a wife.

    Here's the thing... this book read like it didn't have an editor. Did I hate it, not really. It has a good skeleton of a story, but there were a lot of plotlines that were introduced and didn't feel like they headed anywhere. There were also several grammar errors. I also got bored what felt like very early on, but I was roughly 30% into the book and I still felt like nothing was happening. that is a long time to introduce us and the MC to the world of Dragonwall, and they weren't even there yet. 

    I ended up skimming most of the book. Nothing really grabbed me, and some of the dialog didn't fit some of the characters, and most of the dialog felt forced.
The characters weren't particularly engaging, the MC is the typical "smart" character who seems to lack common sense. She's also supposed to be in her early to mid-20's but the way she talks she sounds more like a teen, and not someone who has finished college and an undergrad, granted I can't recall what she went to college for, if it was ever mentioned. 

There were a bunch of characters introduced very early on, that I think could've been introduced a little later in the book, or maybe not all at once. There wasn't any context of who they were, and why they mattered before they were introduced. 

    I don't really know what to say, nothing about this book really grabbed me. I think if it had several rounds of editing it would be a lot better.

    I have no idea who this book is for. If I was younger and new to fantasy, then I might like this book more and have fewer criticisms for it.